Sep. 12, 2014

A Jovian Moon With Earth-Like Tectonics

A paper on Jupiter’s moon Europa published this week in Nature Geoscience says that the moon’s surface may undergo processes similar to plate tectonics on Earth, with sheets of icy crust moving around and sometimes diving beneath each other. Simon Kattenhorn, an author on the paper, says that finding active plate tectonics on Europa could have important implications for thinking about new, habitable worlds.